A conventional way to lock a f*N voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) to an f*M frequency reference, where N and M are integers and f is a common frequency component, is to divide the two frequency signals by the integers N and M, respectively, and to phase lock the resulting “f” frequency outputs together. If N and M are large, however, this approach may not provide sufficient loop bandwidth to overcome phase noise in the VCO.
One prior art method of addressing this loop bandwidth problem is to synthesize an approximation of f*M/P using hardware running on the f*N frequency clock. Here P is a small integer such that M/P<N. For example if f=1 Hz, N=1000, M=1007 and P=4, a 1007/4 (f*M/P)=251.75 Hz approximation is synthesized from the 1000 Hz (f*N) source as follows. On every 1000 Hz clock an accumulator is incremented by 1007. If the result is positive, the accumulator is decremented by P*N=4000 and an output pulse is generated. The 1007 Hz (f*M) clock is divided by 4 and used to lock the 251.75 Hz approximation just generated. With a slow enough loop filter, this gives the desired results. However the phase noise of the 251.75 Hz approximation has significant low frequency energy requiring the slow loop response.
Another prior art method for addressing this loop bandwidth problem is to synthesize a sine wave of frequency f*/MP using hardware running on the f*N frequency clock. In this case P is such that M/P<N/2. The sine wave is synthesized using a read only memory (ROM) look-up table on the upper (or all) bits of a first (only) accumulator, followed by a digital to analog converter and a narrow band pass filter at the frequency f*/MP. The sine wave is squared up and used in a phase comparator as in the above prior art method. This method allows a fast loop response, but requires more analog parts and the phase alignment is very sensitive to the accuracy of the band pass filter components.
Yet another prior art method for addressing the loop bandwidth problem described above is accomplished through the implementation of a Sigma-Delta Fractional-N Synthesizer. An example of such a Sigma-Delta Fractional-N Synthesizer is depicted in U.S. Pat. No. 5,517,534 issued May 14, 1996 to David L. Knierim entitled “Phase locked loop with reduced phase noise”, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. In the Knierim Patent an accumulator-based phase locked loop uses one or more additional accumulators to reduce phase noise by shifting the energy of the phase noise to higher frequencies, beyond the bandwidth of a loop filter. Such a system, however, is limited in speed because the entire circuit must operate at the full velocity of an included VCO.